SimCity vs Super Mario Bros. 3 vs Tecmo Super Bowl vs Secret of Monkey Island 2009
Results Round One Sunday, April 12th, 2009 Ulti's Analysis Even though this match had a decent fight for second place, this was all about witnessing the raw power of Mario 3. We may never again see a perfect storm of strength as circumstance as we did here, because breaking 75% in a fourway poll should be nearly impossible. To do this, you need to be against three entrants that you're able to hold around 12% all at the same time. It's tough to appreciate what Mario 3 did here given it lost to Mario World twice and barely survived losing to it thrice, but breaking 75% in a fourway poll is insane. But in fairness, Mario did this because the competition flat-out sucked. Not one of these games deserved to even make the contest, let alone place and get to the second round. But one of them had to pull it off, and oddly enough this was the perfect spot for those freaks who always help Guybrush get up to 12%. SimCity was actually the consensus the score second place here due to everyone having played it at one point or another, and it played its part early on. It more or less dominated the poll for three hours (as well as one can "dominate" while first place is on its way to scoring 75%, anyway) and built up a 300 vote lead. But then the Europe block kicked in, and SimCity's entire lead disappeared in about two hours before Monkey Island clinched the match with the morning vote. It was up for good by the time SimCity started stalling again, but a more accurate description is Mario 3 destroyed the poll so easily that no one could really make a move here, a la Duck Hunt losing to Ninja Gaiden. Monkey Island finally winning one was good and all, but let's be serious. It would probably lose to all but a handful of games in this bracket. Match Trends Ngamer's Same Day Analysis Match Prediction Turning our attention to this Mario 3 "battle", I just have to say one thing. As much as I've pushed for a return to 1v1s and bad mouthed SB for withholding them from us, matches like this sure do keep the first two rounds interesting. I mean sure, the fact that either SimCity, Monkey Island, or Tecmo Bowl has to "win" a match is a total joke, but it should still be fun to watch these three featherweights smack each other with pillows for 24 hours while Mario 3 goes on what I would almost guarantee will be a record-setting tear. As to which of these hilarious weaklings has the upper hand, well, that's where things get a little tricky. Let's start by eliminating Tecmo Bowl. PC games in general and older PCs games in particular are so vastly underplayed/underappreciated at this site that I would actually take Tecmo over either of these guys without thinking twice if this were a straight up 1v1. But it's not, and to make matters worse TB has drawn the worst possible opponent- I can't imagine there is any game from the NES/SNES era who would lay a worse beatdown on a old casual Nintendo favorite (not even LttP!). That's why I think the favorite going into this one has to be SimCity. Yes it's old and a PC game, but it's also universally played and well known the world over as the game that launched millions of millions of sales for the whole line of Sim___/The Sims/etc games. Plus it has the added advantage of being released on the SNES where I think it did decently. The last contender is Monkey Island, which I automatically dismissed when filling out my initial bracket and am now regretting. I assumed that, like the Tales Of... series, Monkey Island/Guybrush was one of those things with an incredibly dedicated fanbase that was always going to get it into brackets but would never amount to anything when the actual polls arrived. Looking back at it now though, Guybrush seems like a lock to put up 9-13% of the vote regardless of competition, and considering how badly Mario is going to wreck this balance, that could very well be enough to advance. I think it should be pretty close between Monkey Island and SimCity in America, but now I wish I'd bothered to research how those two games sold outside of this continent, because whichever has the international edge is probably going to take this. Hmm... well too late now, so I'll just stick with my original idea that SimCity was big the world over and say: * Super Mario Bros. 3 - 74% * SimCity - 11% * Secret of Monkey Island - 8% * Tecmo Super Bowl - 7% That looks like something I have 0 confidence in. Ahhhhhh! Next Day Review Well like I said, it's a shame I wasn't aware that Monkey Island was liked in Europe, otherwise I would probably have called this match correctly. But, come on, we just witnessed a poll where something on the same level of strength as Guybrush Threepwood advanced into the next round- it's hard to beat yourself up too much over a result like that no matter how you called it. Positive notes: not only did Mario 3 smash the record for biggest win, it has also almost single handedly (considering the pathetic contributions of its opponents) outdrawn yesterday's Sonic/SFII match by about 6500 votes, and is only come about 1000 short of matching Zelda/Metroid as the most popular of the year so far. This game is a monster, and so to answer tranny's question: after a performance like this, yes, I'm still liking my picks of SFII to R4 and Mario 3 to R6. They call this man the King of SFF for a reason! External Links * Match Updates * Guru Match Predictions * Oracle Match Results • Previous Match • Next Match Category:2009 Spring Contest Matches